was one event I can't remember at all. I mean... when it happened, I not only was not watching, I'm not sure I even knew it was going to happen. It was the summer before senior year for me. Perhaps I was out cruisin the gut... as we used to call it. Or eating with my friends at Pizza Hut with its groovy black lights.

It was early in 1986. I was taking a college freshman chemistry test.
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When I finished the test, I walked over to the student lounge and everyone was glued to the tv. I just remember the newscast showing the cloud over and over, and it reminding me of a caterpillar with two antennae. Weird what sticks in your head.

During the weeks after, I was regularly appalled by my fellow students' attitudes that NASA somehow "deserved" the disaster, since they hadn't had one since the Apollo incident. I remember some chick saying how NASA had gotten too "cocky" and this tragedy should bring them back to reality. Jerks. I guess they forgot that people died that day.

Probably the Thredbo Landslide and the rescue of Stuart Diver
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This is an even that probably only Australians and New Zealanders are aware of...It happened in July 1997, when I was 7 (and only half a month before Princess Diana died, which would have doubtless been the biggest news story had Thredbo not happened first). I don't remember it 100% clearly, but I do remember hearing tidbits on the news every night for the 3 or so days that the rescue teams searched for survivors, and eventually found Diver.

Well, I was vaguely aware there was an election in 1988. I am always disappointed in myself that I don't remember the Berlin Wall. Definitely remember the Gulf War though -- I would have been 8 too. (You a 1982 baby too? )

My oldest memory of a world event was when Truman fired Douglas MacArthur. I would have been no more than 5. I don't remember exactly when that was.

I remember thinking how could anyone fire a general, they were next in line after God. Having been born at the end of WWII, I grew up with news about generals, and watching news reels and war movies, I seem to have had a rather inflated idea of generals!

With my mom and dad. We had flown from Massachusetts out to Colorado to visit my brother, who was spending the summer as a camp counsellor in the Rockies. We'd taken him to the rodeo in Cheyenne (Wyoming) (where I bought a "Frodo Lives" button), and when we took him back to the camp they had a TV on for the campers, as the lunar module had just landed. We hung around for a while waiting for the crew to step onto the Moon, but it got late and we had to leave. We got back to the motel room in time for the "small step/giant leap".

I was in my office and the physics lab across the hall had TV, and I heard people gasp, and went in to see what was going on. I still remember the looks on people's faces as I walked into the room.

I heard so many awful news stories when I was in that building. I remember hearing about the Columbine massacre there, as I listened to the radio in my office. I never saw more shell-shocked students than the ones in my classes that day. And there was the Oklahoma City bomb. And I remember hearing about 9/11 as I was driving to work, and coming to the door of that building and being met by a wide-eyed coworker who said "Have you been listening to the radio?" We went over to the student center and watched it all on a huge TV there; the students weren't on campus yet, and the faculty and staff were supposed to be in meetings, but we huddled in front of the TV instead.

Wow, I was just an hour north of you, in our basement watching on the TV. We went outside afterwards and looked up at the moon and tried to imagine the people walking on it. My husband says he did the same thing.

I remember the shock and confusion, and thinking "Wait....that did not just happen!" and the teachers being just as shocked and horrified as we were but trying valiantly to pull themselves together and continue on with the school day with a bunch of stunned or crying children. To make it even worse, our class had a field trip scheduled to the NASA/Ames research center a week later. It was the most depressing school field trip ever. I look back and feel sorry for our NASA docent, trying to answer questions about the disaster from a bunch of elementary school kids.

I was 11, and remember it well. My parents were appalled. They certainly shared the notion that firing a General was like firing God. They were among those crying, "Unleash Chiang Kai-shek," although it turned out later he was both incompetent and corrupt.

...while eating breakfast (I lived in CA). First I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Then, I did. I went into the office and told everyone, and they were equally shocked. I don't think many of us got much work done that day, and I'm sure that was true all over.

I was fascinated by the election of John Paul II as Pope even though I'm not Catholic
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It's strange that this story has always stood out in my memory. I was fascinated by the pomp and ceremony, and waiting for the white smoke to announce the election of a new Pope, as well as everyone's excitement that he was Polish. The fact that John Paul II's election as Pope was one of the first news stories that spoke to me as a kid made it especially meaningful that I was in Poland when he died.

Some of you guys have lived through some pretty important stuff!
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Some of them were probably horrifying though.

Me? I tend to remember pop-culture events in history a lot better that were big news stories. Like the OJ Simpson chase and trial, I remember seeing on TV, when my parents would watch it. Of course 9/11 was the one I most remember clearly, and understood what was going on, but I was 13 at the time.

I also remember their parody "East Side Story" about Khrushchev ("Nikita! I just met a Red named Nikita!") that had something about him.

I remember the government trying to pass the flight off as a NASA research flight. Of course Khrushchev had set a trap and let the US government deny everything before revealing that Powers was alive and had confessed. I remember being very upset that the US government had lied. Innocence lost at seven years old. I mean, we were supposed to be the good guys!

...being very disappointed he didn't take the name Pope George Ringo. Always seemed rather unfair.

But similarly, I remember being very impressed with the selection of Pope Paul VI in 1963. Of course back then there was a lot more solemnity without all the flashing color graphics or the need for constant analysis by talking heads. I think the world community was better served by the simplicity of "Show, Not Tell" over today's "Say Something, Anything To Avoid Dead Airtime".

And dunno why, but I always felt some connection between the death of Pope John and that of President Kennedy a few months later. To a seven year old both seemed part of a larger tragedy, an unthinkable shaking of the foundations of the world that had seemed so permanent.